Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ Category

It was around 1984 when flaming logos and animated ‘under construction’ images were a thing. Someone realised that if you stuffed your web page with words about scantily clad females and their large anatomy, that you would get found by more people searching the ‘net and that you might get more traffic to your website and therefore customers. Thus was born the industry of search engine optimisation (or ‘SEO’ as it is commonly known).

Yes, we know you get inundated with unsolicited emails and phone calls offering SEO services, and telling you that your website lost visitors over the weekend due to lack of SEO, from local and overseas organisations guaranteeing amazing results in a short time.

We know you get these, because we get them too!

But please don’t be turned off this very valuable marketing tactic, just because of the number of shonky service providers.

There are 4 pillars of SEO activity which we employ across your website and which work together to deliver high ranks in the search engines, particularly Google:

PILLAR 1: SEARCH TERMS
The selection of search terms for your website is a critical step in optimising your website for search engines. There will likely be many words that you can use to describe your products, services and industry. However, not all of these will be commonly used by people who need to find you. And if there are too many such words, you won’t (at least initially) have enough content to support them from an SEO point of view.

The critical nature of this step is why we start all our new SEO projects with a Competitor and Search Term Analysis to identify commonly used search terms, for which your website has the greatest opportunity to rank fast. We then allocate the selected search terms across your website so that if you are editing content on pages of your site, you know the focus search term for that page. Over time, as we see positive rank changes for the selected search terms, we will work with you to add more terms into your website. Search term reviews are also important to ensure that we identify new terminology and changes in search behaviour, over time.

PILLAR 2: CONTENT
Once appropriate search terms have been selected, then these need to be utilised throughout your website, in an appropriate way (not stuffed into your site in white on white text – that’s black hat SEO, and doesn’t work / gets you banned). Our SEO tactics include ensuring appropriate frequency, and placement, of search terms and related / semantic terms. A content strategy may be required with regard to your use of blogs, and interlinked web pages, white papers, and social posts to help your website appear high in the search engines for the selected search terms.

PILLAR 3: TECHNICAL OPTIMISATION
How easy it is for a search engine to crawl your website using the code that is found behind the page, combined with how easy it is for a visitor to use your website, are the drivers of technical optimisation. Implementing technical optimisation can involve a wide range of activities, from reducing the size and number of javascript functions that are required for your website, to reducing the size of images, or implementing caching. Our experienced web development team will carry out the technical optimisation, ensuring that your website is protected during this process, and appropriate backups and code source control is implemented.

PILLAR 4: WEBSITE AUTHORITY
Google’s determination of how to rank your website on a search for a particular word or phrase, compared to other possible results, is also heavily influenced by its private ranking algorithms. The closest we know to this secret score is Moz’s Domain Authority score, however we know many of the factors Google assess.

Authority can be attributed to your website by the number and quality (domain authority) of links to your site. Links can be part of advertisements, guest blog posts, news articles, directories, and more. Building inbound links (also known as ‘backlinks’) over a period of time is very important for your website authority, and increases the likelihood of achieving high ranks. As part of our SEO service, we will help you to build quality links, and disavow dubious backlinks which may arise due to the behaviour of black hat SEO.

The way Contactpoint carries out SEO is a bit like the person working in the commercial division of a large corporation, who continually turns over the same rocks (supplier contracts) trying to extract a bit more value month after month. Every month we spend a few hours concentrating on activities within the 4 pillars, to glean just a bit more value, just a bit more optimisation. We do this over a long period of time, rather than all at once, for the following reasons:

Google values a natural change in your website content. When your website’s suddenly gets a raft of changes (except when you have launched a new site such as our recently launched project Sound Cartel), Google perceives that as you using black hat or grey hat techniques from a dubious SEO company who has attached your website to a link farm or similar. Remember those companies who offer to get you ranks in no time? That’s likely what they will be doing. Having Contactpoint carry out a small number of changes to your site, each month, ensures that the search engines perceive your site as being regularly updated, and any SEO work is considered organic and natural.

Google’s search engine algorithms change on a regular basis. As part of our monthly work, we have the opportunity to adjust your site optimisation accordingly.

Your competitors may change their site or SEO tactics, causing your ranks to drop. Each month we check your ranks, in comparison to selected competitors, allowing us to adjust our tactics if your ranks start dropping. If you are not paying attention to the numbers, you won’t know to take any action.

Depending on your industry, search behaviour of your potential customers may change. For example, a new buzz word is introduced into your industry, or the current news means people are searching for a different type of service more frequently. At an appropriate frequency for your website, our SEO service also includes reviewing the search terms used to optimise your site, to ensure that they are still the most popular search terms, for which you can achieve a high return on investment.

We have found over the decades during which we have been performing search engine optimisation for our clients that we have been able to achieve great ranks and increase traffic to their websites, often on very small budgets.

On the rare occasion where we haven’t been able to achieve high ranks and increased traffic, we have stopped out service so as to not waste our clients money.

What is black hat / grey hat and white hat?
What constitutes safe SEO is really just a matter of not trying to trick Google into giving you higher ranks then your content actually deserves by providing high quality content and making that easy for the visitor to find.

More recently we are also seeking to provide answers to questions that searchers are like to ask, making it easy for Google to find the right answer. Anything added or implemented within your website in an attempt to trick Google into ranking you highly, is likely to be circumvented by Google in a future algorithm update, and at that time your website and any ranks you may have achieved will likely be penalised.

Link farms are a common approach to try and trick Google. A link farm is a pretend directory or website – often with a high domain authority – that has many links to other websites. These have come and gone over the last decade, in various forms, getting better and better at tricking Google, but ultimately Google always identifies and remove the offending pages from its ranks. It’s just not worth it, and there are more legitimate tactics for ranking higher in Google.

Contactpoint has been providing SEO to our clients since 1999. We have only ever employed white hat tactics, and will always follow that principle. That way you can be assured that when Google performs an update of its search engine algorithm, that your website will not be penalised for black hat SEO tactics. Sometimes we will see sudden drops in ranks, but in such a situation, the ranks improve again very shortly thereafter.

So why would you consider doing SEO (or perhaps reconsider SEO)?

Whilst SEO is a medium-term marketing strategy (you can’t just start one day and receive the benefit the next), it is very cost effective. It is much more cost effective than pay per click campaigns, even though increasingly it is obvious that what Google want you to spend your money on a Google Ad campaign!

SEO has a longer lifespan than PPC or social media marketing. Your efforts in SEO can have an impact over many years; PPC ads are only present as long as you are willing to pay for their appearance in the search engines. Social media posts have the highest likelihood of being seen only within a few hours of posting.

Being found in Google is now even more important than ever before!

Our SEO service starts with an initial analysis to determine the best search terms to choose for your website and determining how competitive your area actually is online. We then provide SEO on a budgeted hours per months basis starting at just 4 hours per month (determined by the extent of your content and how much content you are likely to produce requiring optimisation).

Wondering how Contactpoint’s SEO might benefit your business?

Call us today for a no obligation chat regarding our SEO services, and how we can improve your websites ranks in the search engines.

Just like Rome can’t be built in a day, the same goes for high performing search engine optimisation (‘SEO’).

Search Engine Optimisation isn’t a short-term tactic. Consequently, this is one area of your digital marketing where a long-term plan is required.

Businesses have been greatly impacted, either directly due to restrictions on the services they can supply, or indirectly due to overall dampening of the economy as a result of COVID-19. In such a time, it is understandable that businesses are looking for ways to reduce expenses. However, we feel that it is important to give a word of caution before you cut your spend on SEO.

Search engine ranks are grown, or are damaged, over time.

There are a large number of factors that Google’s algorithms take into consideration when determining whether or not to show your website as the best result for a search. These factors include:

The freshness of your content. That’s why blogs are so important. They are usually dated, and a way of providing the latest information to searchers. Google can tell if your content has been updated or not, including behind-the-page optimisation and adjustments. If you pause your SEO, it’s likely that your site will start to look less fresh and be given a lower rank.

Now might be a great time for you to write the white papers that you have been gathering data for, over time, or to create the additional help documentation, or resources your clients need to better understand what you do for them.

Natural Growth. Growing your content in a natural way (slowly over time) is likely to look more like valuable, authoritative content compared to a sudden burst of new content.

Authority conferred by shares. If your new content is shared over social media, and the destination of back links, then your content is also deemed as more valuable for search results by Google. If you aren’t adding content, you are missing this opportunity to build your ranks and website authority.

Aside from the above factors, if you pause your search engine optimisation during the COVID-19 pandemic, you are unlikely to be aware if your competitor’s ranks are overtaking your website ranks. Perhaps they are adding new content or services, or are using new strategies to rank on the terms you are competing for ranks on. The sooner you are aware of the change in your competitive landscape, the more quickly you can take action.

One area Contactpoint addresses as part of search engine optimisation activities for our clients is their Google My Business account. Google My Business has recently offered various features in terms of post, revised opening hours for business, events and COVID 19 Business updates that you can add to your Google My Business account.

At a time when we’re all searching for more comfort, these features allow your organisation to provide your customers with additional help. Using Events and Offers could be beneficial to your business to promote your virtual event, consultation or a training course that you may be offering.

We have also seen that posting articles via Google My Business has increased traffic and visibility for our client’s businesses. Articles can only be 2 ? 3 paragraphs in length, and so will likely point to the full article on your website. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like some help with utilising Google My Business to promote your organisation.

Another approach to help your local SEO during this time is to tap on the power of positive reviews. Online reputation management is very important during difficult times. Going out of your way to provide virtual consultation or virtual assistance to potential or existing customers when they need it most during this COVID-19 pandemic will likely reward your business with an encouraging review.

Undertaking monthly maintenance of your website to organically improve its ranks is like exercising to lose weight. You cannot experience the advantages of exercising in the short-term however if you keep at it diligently over time you see and experience the advantages. If you quit exercising you may not notice a lot of contrast in a couple of days or even a few weeks. But, to get back to being fit, after an extensive stretch of idleness is a lot harder than keeping up wellness over a similar timeframe. SEO is in many ways similar to this analogy of exercise.

If your competitors stop their SEO activities during this downturn, and you do not, it will be your competitors who are playing catch up in a few months’ time and you will be well prepared to keep your business growing.

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”.
– Warren Buffet

If you are interested to learn more about how SEO strategies can help your business, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

It’s been nearly a year since we blogged about pay-per-click advertising in the search engines (‘PPC’ e.g. Google Ads / Bing Ads). A lot has changed over that short time including a new name and a completely new user interface for Google Ads; this blog is intended as an update for business owners and marketing managers to help you keep abreast of what is possible, and the best way to approach search engine marketing.

Most of the change is around the use of AI applied to the smart delivery of targeted ads, making the customisation of ads for mobile phones much easier to encourage more advertisers to display their ads on mobile, and additional control by Google to ensure positive customer experience.

Quality Scores
I’ve been involved in search engine optimisation (‘SEO’ – the art of achieving high ranks in the search engines for relevant, popular keyword searches) since the mid 1990s and organic traffic (people finding you through searchable content) has always been the #1 priority, and PPC ads the more costly way to get immediate website traffic while your SEO efforts grow your ranks over time. Naturally, the search engines, who only make money from paid ads, don’t see it that way.

Google changes the appearance of ads on a regular basis, and gives preference to the display of ads, all in the attempt to make money at the same time as delivering valid results for searchers. It is in Google’s best interest to ensure that not only are organic search results highly relevant to the searcher, but also the ads. Google want people to be just as willing to click on an ad as they are willing to click on a ‘normal’ search result. To that end, even if you want to pay over the odds to Google for your ad in relation to particular search terms, you may find that your ad isn’t being displayed. That’s because the destination of the ad – the landing page, or web page where the searcher ends up when they click – is now also assessed by Google in determining who to show your ad to. This is referred to as the ‘quality score’. If your ad is about treating back pain, and takes you to a web page that talks about exercise without reference to back pain for example, Google is likely to give your ad a low quality score and be less inclined to present the ad to searchers, and when your ad is presented the click cost will be higher (ouch).

What this means is that you must have high quality landing pages / ad destination pages which richly develop the intent of the ad, and the ads must include appropriate keywords that are reflecting in the landing pages, which brings us to dynamic ads.

Landing pages that are congruent with your ads have been important for a long time and has driven the trend of having your landing pages not only disconnected from your main website navigation, but also omitting your site navigation in order to focus the attention of the visitor only on the action you want them to take. This latest evolution is driving the use of 3rd party platforms which make it easier for digital marketers to setup dynamic landing pages, including sophisticated analytics around visitor behaviour.

Responsive Ads [and dynamic landing pages]
The latest overhaul of the Google Ad’s platform provides seriously sophisticated functionality for creating responsive ads – that is, ads whose content programmatically incorporates the search term entered by the searcher, from a set of search terms which you specify, and configures itself to the available space. A combination of 15 alternate headlines and 4 descriptions is possible. Using our back pain example, the responsive ad functionality allows you to create an ad which might have a headline of ‘Suffering from back pain’ or ‘Suffering from a sore back’ or ‘Suffering from a back injury’ all with the one ad i.e. you don’t need to create 3 ads to achieve this. Then, if the searcher types in ‘help with back pain’ your ad will appear as “Suffering from back pain”, or if they type in ‘recovering from a back injury’, your ad will appear as “Suffering from a back injury”. The descriptions in the content of the ads can similarly be filled on the fly to match the searcher’s intent as determined by AI.

To take this one step further, specialised landing pages can be configured to receive the search terms entered by the searcher, and then display those words in the appropriate place. Obviously you need to be careful when doing this to ensure that the dynamic content makes sense in all cases, particularly if you decide to add more keywords a few month’s later. But the end result is a much more relevant landing page, a higher quality score, and additional traffic to your site at a lower cost.

The ability to create responsive ads and content takes a bit of effort to setup, but means that you can create a lot more ads for less effort over the longer term, and achieve greater ad impressions, therefore more clicks, at a lower cost. It doesn’t however take away the need for greater copywriters, creative ideas and overall campaign strategy.

Ad Format
The available ad formats continue to evolve, and now includes:

Basic text-only ads.

Responsive ads – can insert text from a set of specified options matching the searcher’s search term, transform into text or image ads and automatically adjust size, appearance and format to fit space.

Targeting
How we ensure ads are seen by the right people is continuing to evolve. In the Google Display Network (where websites show Google Ads, rather than ads as a result of customer searching) the placement of ads is much more a result of prior browsing activity and demographics (by users signed into Google) and less about their search terms.

Google’s “Exact Match” setting is no longer really exact … instead it works out intent using AI (read more about the dismantling of exact match over the years). This is a little annoying as taking that control away means that we are relying on the accuracy of the AI and ultimately Google wants you to spend more. It also means that the thorough use of negative keywords (preventing your ads from displaying when particular search terms are used) is even more important. We constantly review the search terms used to display ads, and extend the negative keywords list to prevent waste of our client’s ad budgets.

With Google’s significant improvement in targeting by audiences – whereby you load your known audience (customer database) up into Google and it then targets exactly those people with your ads, or builds matching audiences of similar people – due to it’s use of artificial intelligence, using this feature to target the right customers for your ads has become more useful. You can make the best use of this feature when you have a larger customer database, and when you know where each person or segment are in their buying journey, allowing you to present appropriate ads for each person. New demographics have been appearing in the audience settings including marital status, home ownership and the like, so we expect this area to continue to expand. Although the recent $5Bn fine against Facebook could slow things down in this area?

Many businesses use Google Ads primarily for top-of-funnel (prospects at the very start of a customer purchase journey) and then use other means to communicate with the new prospect such as email nurture programs. Not surprisingly, Google wants businesses to use Google ads all the way through the process. The use of Google re-marketing – presenting a similar ad to a person who has previously clicked on your ads and visited your website – is another cost-effective way to re-enforce your message with prospects, as these ads have significantly cheaper cost per click.

Bing have launched their own audience building feature this year, which is also AI powered across data collected from Bing searches, Skype, MSN and LinkedIn usage, and is not to be ignored for highly targeted campaigns.

Configuration
Setting up ad campaigns for mobile searches (more than half of all searches are carried out on a mobile phone) was previously cumbersome, requiring advertisers to create another set of ads just for mobiles. That’s changed with the new ad platform allowing the one ad, including ad extensions, to be customised within the one place for desktop and mobile.

Goal based campaigns allows the choice of the results you want to achieve – such as increased leads, greater brand awareness or higher conversions – and then Google will provide recommendations for campaign types that will perform best for you and your budget, and provides numerous automatic bid and placement optimisations. Again this is a result of their deepening use of artificial intelligence.

Whilst Google is giving us far more recommendations to use as we configure and optimise ads, sometimes these recommendations conflict; we don’t just follow these without careful consideration to ensure that they fit with your objectives.

Ad Extensions allow extra information to be shown as part of your ads. New ad extensions include Promotion Extension – the ability to include a price or special offer – thus enticing a visitor to click your ad instead of another.

Controls
Google is much more active in the assessment and banning of ads for all manner of legal and ethical reasons. We create ads with the best intentions in mind, include images, and then may need edit after Google has reviewed.

If you are using Click to Call style ads, the business name in your ads must now really be your business name, and mentioned in your IVR or by the person answering (sounds obvious, right … you would be surprised at how less-than-honest marketers have exploited this in the past). Interestingly, with the increase use of mobiles for search, Google removed the extra charge it originally levied on advertisers using click to call ads to provide metrics and reporting such as length of call (now a customisable setting to attribute as a conversion which previously not been tracked).

Summary
Due to the complexity of the ad platforms, increasing competition for organic search ranks, priority of the search companies to drive revenue through search, and the importance of the configuration on the cost of your pay-per-click ad campaigns, it is really important to keep a close eye on your pay-per-click ad campaigns. We work with our clients with pay-per-click campaigns in a variety of models, from strategic advice all the way through to full responsibility for creation and execution of ads. We can pick up your existing campaigns from where they currently are and improve them over time, or work with you to create your first ever pay-per-click ads.

We look forward to having a conversation.

But Wait! There’s More
We haven’t touched on You Tube ads in this article (also owned by Google). With the viewing of You Tube video continuing to grow, presenting video ads within You Tube is an option more organisations need to utilise.

Google does not stand still – it tends to roll out a major update to its ad platform every 6 months. Google has already announced the many new features coming to their ad platform which will likely be rolled out during the rest of this year. Many of these relate to search on mobile phones. Here’s a short list:

A new type of ad – Discovery Ads – to appear in the new Google Discovery Feed app that mobile users are likely using on their phones. Discovery Ads, because they are interrupting people in a similar way to ads inside your Facebook Feed, will have strict quality constraints around them e.g. the requirement for unique (not stock) high quality images.

Images inside search ads, but only on mobile, and only in the first place – this will be called a Gallery Ad.

AI will be used to create interesting 6 second videos from original, up to 90 seconds in length.

Deep links from ads to inside apps.

Advanced bid strategies will allow you to exclude data considered by artificial intelligence when determining when to place ads e.g. particular spikes due to out-of-the-ordinary activities.

Location based ads will start appearing in Google Maps search suggestions and while a user is use getting directions.

We look forward to exploring the use of these changes and more in the Google ads platform.

Google recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Over it’s short lifetime it has become an indispensable tool that millions of people rely on everyday. Can you imagine life without Google?

Digital marketing has also developed in capability over the past 20 years. Once it was enough to simply have website, and perhaps a well-placed banner ad. However technology and consumer expectation has evolved, and there are a multitude of new ways to reach consumers.

Targeting.
You might think of Google as a search engine, but at its core, Google is the world’s most effective advertising platform.

Have you ever wondered how Google (or Facebook etc) manage to show you ads that are startlingly relevant to your needs? They use thousands of data points on every single one of us to help target the best audience for advertisements. Just like your Facebook stream is personalised to you, so are the ads you are shown on Google, based on your search and browsing history.

For advertisers it can be quite cost effective to advertise on these platforms, as your ad is only being shown to the audience you’ve selected, and that the platform calculates is most likely to respond to your ad. With Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) you only pay when a user responds to your ad, minimising wasted budget on uninterested people.

People use Google when they are hunting for a solution to a need. They are often ready to act, so ensuring your product or service is displayed is critical to marketing your business these days. Underneath the paid ads are the organic search results – the best ranked matches for a search. This is why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial for most businesses online. You need to be there when the consumer is ready to act, and SEO is the craft of optimising a website to rank as top answers to valuable consumer questions.

Personalisation.
Do you have a mailing list signup on your website? Perhaps you send an email every month or so, keeping your customers up to date with your business.

No longer is it enough to send out a general email newsletter to all your subscribers. Consumers expect advertising and messaging to be relevant to their needs and interests. Have you ever bought clothes online? You’ve no doubt received follow up email campaigns that showcase other items you may like to purchase, based on what you have browsed and purchased before.

Their digital marketing platform tracks not only what you purchase, but also what you’ve looked at and added to your cart, and uses that data to build a profile on you in order to send an individual email – just for you. This is dynamic personalisation and email marketing automation, and it’s a core part of modern digital marketing.

However it doesn’t end there. You may go back to the website, and the homepage banner is also relevant for you, and other users who are part of your segment.

A segment is a collection of people that fall under a certain category – gender, age, time since last purchase – there are endless ways we can use data to make offers and messaging more relevant. In fact, segmenting your data is the best way to help keep a positive return on investment for a digital marketing campaign. Your aim is to send the right offer, to the right person, at the right time, at the right price.

Retargeting.
Perhaps you’ve looked at a product in a website but didn’t purchase. Sometimes, ads for that product seem to follow you around the internet – on other websites and social media, or you might receive an email reminding you to complete your purchase. This is called retargeting.

Retargeting is a very effective way to help persuade consumers who have shown interest, but haven’t yet purchased, or taken action. Because the re-targeting is only advertising to visitors that have already shown some interest, it keeps the costs down and the conversion rate up, leading to excellent return on investment for these campaigns.

The always on generation.
That phone in your pocket is more than just a device for phone calls. It’s your 24 hour portal to the internet. As this has become the standard, consumers also expect businesses to cater for them at all times of the day.

So how do you handle this expectation? A recent trend has been the introduction of helper chat popups on websites that can answer consumer questions at any time of the day. These popups can provide customer service using pre-populated answers, or alert you if a potential customer has a query. They are cost effective and can help convert visitors to customers by enabling excellent, on demand customer service.

As technology advances, so does the way we do business online. Above are just a few of the recent trends in Digital Marketing. If it’s been a few years since you have had your site built, or tried a digital marketing campaign, call us today on 03 8525 2082 to arrange a free consultation in order to assess your business needs, and determine cost effective digital marketing strategies that can make your business stand out online.

If you started your business more than 5 years ago, you could be forgiven to believing that online marketing was something to try out if you had a bit of spare marketing budget. Times have changed. Over the last few years, the reality of digital marketing for small business has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for most businesses. Consumers are more connected than ever before, and their default behaviour when looking for anything ? products, services or information ? is to grab their mobile phone and search online. Even word of mouth has gone digital; recommendations happen across social media, and online reviews can have a significant impact on your business.

Bottom line: digital marketing is more important now for small business than ever before.

We have many clients for whom we have carried out digital marketing across a wide range of platforms and strategies, many of which achieved significant increases in new business enquiries or sales. Some of our clients now receive the majority of all their incoming work through digital marketing channels.

That’s not to say that word of mouth is unimportant; it’s simply that digital marketing provides you with immediate results and a wider reach at a lower cost.

However, it is very possible to implement digital marketing poorly, and therefore not achieve the results you are seeking. That’s often why we are engaged by our clients to design, write, execute and manage digital marketing for them.

Digital marketing can have a bit of a bad reputation. Unfortunately, there are many less scrupulous service providers who use digital marketing tactics to grow their own business and then fail to deliver tangible results for their clients. Even worse, they use tactics to “game” online platforms like Google for short term gains but ultimately end up with the client being penalised.

At Contactpoint, we take an end-to-end approach to digital solutions for our clients, and digital marketing is just one part of it. It’s our holistic approach that helps us deliver real results for clients, as we take the time to discuss our client’s business needs and only then recommend an approach for digital marketing that can deliver results. We never recommend the latest digital marketing technology just because it’s flavour of the month, nor will we cheat the system to get the quick results.

Just one example of our success in delivering digital marketing results for our clients is Nortan; providers of air conditioning and heating service and installation. Via a range of activities including a great mobile responsive website, pay per click advertising and SEO, Nortan are kept very busy all year round with new incoming leads, and have grown their business significantly over the time we have been providing digital marketing services. In fact, from time-to-time Nortan ask us to pause their digital marketing campaigns, because they are too busy with new work! What a good problem to have!

We work very closely with our clients to ensure that the level of business digital marketing campaigns produce are manageable.

If you would like to revisit your use of digital marketing to grow your business, please feel free to call Heather Maloney for a chat.

According to Wikipedia1, people in sales and marketing positions have been talking about sales funnels since the 1920s. The sale of many products and services involve a lead time from investigation through to purchase. Having a certain number of leads at each stage of the sales funnel or customer journey is frequently used as a lead indicator of your likely sales volume at a point in the future. Marketing attempts to ensure that people entering an organisation’s sales funnel have a certain problem they are trying to solve or need that must be met, and that are aware that solutions to these problems exist. The organisation then attempts to guide the prospective purchasers through their process of research, interaction with the sales team, competitor evaluation and ultimately the purchase of that organisation’s products/services.

A well-managed sales funnel perpetuates interaction with the individuals even after they become clients. Client’s evaluations of the company, employee performance, products and services are ongoing. The sales process should nurture and support clients, leading to repurchase, renewal of contracts and referrals, that is, back to the top of the funnel.

Unfortunately, in practice not all leads will emerge from the bottom of the funnel as clients. Even the best companies will lose a few leads along the way. Astute marketers will be constantly seeking to identify and improve all interactions down through the sales funnel and seek ways to fix common leaks. Improving the efficiency of their sales funnel ranks as the second highest sales priority after closing more deals2.

The Graffiti Eaters is an example of a company who understood the benefits of a sales funnel but knew theirs was leaking somewhere along the way. They came to us with an existing website, Google AdWords campaign, and frequent blog and social media content to target prospects in the early stages of the sales funnel. Relationships with existing clients were maintained through blog and social media content as well as more personalised email newsletters.

After analysing the entire cycle, it became clear that the hole in this funnel was the website. We were able to drive significant traffic to the website of people who were looking to purchase their services via first page ranks in Google search results for relevant search terms. We were able to ensure the Google AdWords ads were displayed above organic search results. We were also able to encourage relevant traffic to click on the ads. However, once traffic reached a landing page of the website, much of the traffic did not continue on through the sales funnel. Potential clients were lost and there was little to show for the advertising expenditure.

Landing pages play a key role in paid ad campaigns; they support the ad with more detailed content, and help the prospect to take action and interact with the vendor. After clicking on an ad, visitors should be directed to a page that provides a clear, specific solution to their problem in a tone and style suitable for the audience type. Once the visitor has interpreted the key messages, that visitor should be guided on how to act on this information. A clear, yet tasteful ‘call-to-action’, such as a form for requesting a quote, a booking form, a request further contact link or the option to make a purchase.

After analysing The Graffiti Eaters website, we found that the landing page provided an unsatisfactory user experience and had significant room for improvement (see image below).

A cluttered appearance, with excessive text, images and animations grouped close together made it difficult for visitors to find the key information. Style inconsistencies throughout the navigation, headings and text provided a substandard appearance which wasn’t appropriate for the predominantly B2B audience. The call-to-action comprising 3 different options was confusing, and on mobile devices, it was only visible by scrolling to the bottom of a very long page.

We analysed the top performing websites in graffiti removal and similar industries which target the same audience. A design was selected which overcame the aforementioned issues (see image below or visit www.graffitieaters.com.au/graffitiremoval/).

The text was simplified to demonstrate the key points that owners and managers of commercial properties are looking for when seeking a professional graffiti removal service. A video was provided for those who are prepared to spend more time on the page.

We provided a clear call-to-action via the ‘Get it Off Now’ button which leads to a simple form, handling both bookings and quote requests. This button is part of a sticky header, which stays in view while the visitor scrolls down the page. A second button was placed towards the bottom of the page with the label ‘Request a Quote’.

The mobile number listed in the sticky header features click-to-call functionality when viewed on mobile devices. This enables visitors to click on the number and automatically call head office. As with the booking/quote request form interactions, this is linked to AdWords conversion tracking so that we can monitor the number of leads the ads provide.

These changes are part of an overall re-design of the website which is now clean, modern and user-friendly on desktop, tablet and mobile devices, while retaining The Graffiti Eaters unique branding elements.

We reviewed the results of the AdWords Graffiti Removal ad group during April 2018 and compared it with April 2017 when the previous website was in use. The landing page gained an astonishing 242.85% more leads in April 2018 than in April 2017.

To put this into perspective, we compared the conversion rate of the Graffiti Removal Ad Group in April 2018 with global averages for AdWords campaigns across all industries3.

The campaign for The Graffiti Eaters achieved more than double the global industry average for conversions and more than triple the conversions gained from the previous website. Not only is the client receiving more leads, they are receiving far greater return on their investment.

The effect of the new design was felt throughout the website, with the number of quotes completed increasing by 44.95% and the number of new clients generated increasing by 25.53%. A great result!

In the digital marketing department of Contactpoint, I work with a diverse range of businesses and organisations to enable their website to rank higher for relevant Google searches. Those whose websites rank high on the first page of results reap the rewards of increased website traffic from their target market, an increase in sales or enquiry, and the ability to decrease spending in other areas of marketing such as paid advertising.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the practice of optimising a website for higher search engine rankings, takes time to learn and implement, and at times requires technical skills. Without any prior knowledge of SEO many business owners or marketing managers are under the impression that if they build a website and write a few pages of content, Google will automatically rank it on the first page of results and traffic will flow. In our experience, it’s rare for a website that hasn’t had optimization applied to achieve good ranks.

In the majority of searches, Google has to sort through thousands, sometimes millions of search results to select the best results for a visitors query. This is important for Google – if they frequently display unhelpful results, people would have no reason to use their search engine.

These are the two factors which all top-ranking websites are successful at doing:

Providing a great user experience

Making it easy for Google to interpret and understand the content on their website

I will now elaborate on 6 of the most common SEO issues which I frequently identify and rectify for clients, enabling them to reach the first page of search results.

1. Search Terms
Many businesses pursue SEO as they operate in a competitive industry, therefore having relevant search terms which allow you to stand a realistic chance of ranking highly in Google is crucial. For example, let’s pretend you are a builder. If we type ‘Builder’ into Google 331,000,000 search results are displayed:

‘Builder’ is a word that could apply to many situations, and is what we call a ‘broad term’ in SEO parlance. If we try something a little more specific, such as ‘Builder Melbourne’ 952,000 results are listed. We can search even more specifically and try ‘Extension Builder Melbourne’ we find that 536,000 results are displayed.

As much as possible, we look for search terms for our client’s websites in which less than 500,000 search results are displayed. Of course, that’s not always possible, but we have enabled many of our clients to push through the crowd and emerge on the first page of results by swapping broad search terms for something more specific.

Another consideration is the type of websites you are competing against. Do searches on the search terms you are targeting return many .gov or .edu websites? Google deems these websites to be highly trustworthy and authoritative in a specific category, so if your domain name ends in .com.au or .com, you will likely be better of pursuing different search terms.

2. H1 Headings
What is a H1 Heading? For most websites it is the first and largest heading on each page in their website. For example on the Contactpoint Search Engine Optimisation page, the heading is, of course, ‘Search Engine Optimisation (‘SEO’)’:
Google uses the H1 Heading as a key determinate of what your web page is about, therefore we recommend inserting 1-2 search terms inside this heading. Common mistakes we see regarding the use of H1 Headings in websites include:

No search terms
This is especially common on the homepage of a business, with headings such as ‘Welcome to *insert business name here*’.

Multiple H1 Headings on the same page
This often arises as the website owner prefers the style of the H1 Heading and wants to use it throughout the page. The downside of this is that your headings lose their effectiveness.

3. Thin Content
Thin Content – that is, only a small amount of content, including little use of the target search terms and perhaps just in bullet point form – is a common and easy mistake to make when launching a new website or redesigning an existing one. Weeks, even months are spent focusing on achieving the right style and functionality, and the text is sometimes given a lower priority or left to the last minute.

Thin content can hurt your search engine rankings in two ways. Firstly, Google deems pages which are lacking text to provide a poor user experience, therefore they are unlikely to be ranked highly. Secondly, Google relies upon text to interpret the contents of your page, and therefore for which searches your page should be suggested. We find that clients who have approximately 500 words of relevant text, written in natural language, on each main page see significant improvements in their search engine ranks.

4. No Redirects & Broken Links
Allowing previously functioning hyperlinks to become detached from a live web page is another common mistake which can occur if a new website launch isn’t properly managed, or when changes to pages and products are made over time without considering what may have been linking to that page. What happens to those who stumble across your old page through Google, links from other websites and social media, or previous visitors who are returning? Instead of seeing the appropriate page, they will be presented with an error page, which is basically a dead end. Most people who stumble across an error page will simply return to Google and visit one of your competitors.

The correct practice is to add a 301 redirect which ensures that anyone who uses an old URL ends up on the replacement page, or whichever page you allocate as being the best alternative. This type of linking also passes on the ranking power of the old page to the new page and removes the impact on your standing with Google that can occur if you have many broken links.

Keeping track of all the dead end links which have been created over the years can be difficult – we help website owners to identify these links and redirect them to appropriate areas of your website.

We also recommend a custom error page, in the event that you miss implementing a re-direct on an obscure barely visited page. The custom error page will include a general message about your services pointing the visitor to the main navigation of your website, which will also be included. This way they are much more likely to keep browsing around to find what they were looking for rather than to return straight back to Google.

5. Demonstrate Authority & Trustworthiness
As part of Google’s commitment to displaying the best quality search results and providing a great experience for their users, Google seeks to display websites which can clearly demonstrate authority and trustworthiness in their chosen field.

One way that a website can demonstrate this is through high-quality backlinks. A backlink is when another website incorporates a link directing traffic to your website. Google judges a websites backlinks in a very similar way to how humans judge each other – if you associate with intelligent, honest, and trustworthy individuals, it is often assumed that you also possess these characteristics. If you associate with liars, criminals and other untrustworthy individuals, then it is often assumed that you also possess these traits.

We help clients to create a backlink strategy and gain recognition from the best sources in their area of expertise.

Trustworthiness can also be demonstrated through an SSL Certificate – meaning that all of the content of your website is transmitted encrypted between the web server and the person viewing or submitting information to your website. You may notice that some websites will have a padlock and the word ‘Secure’ displayed to the left of their URL. Google is starting to show preference for websites which serve all content over SSL (“secure socket layer”), and like many other ranking factors, we expect the importance this will increase over time.

We routinely arrange the purchase and implementation of SSL certificates into our client’s websites which are attached to the website domain. Generally SSL certificates are renewed on a yearly basis.

6. Duplicate Content
One of the most common SEO issues is duplicate content. ‘Duplicate content’ refers to the situation where the same content is available from multiple URL’s. Common instances of duplicate content include:

Faceted Navigation
This is particularly common in e-commerce websites where products are placed in categories to enable visitors to navigate a large product range with ease. For example a shirt may be found in the multiple categories such as:

men’s shirts

business shirts

on sale

Ideally, the product page of a particular shirt would have the same URL no matter what category it is located in. However, some websites fail to do this and will show the same product page under different URL’s such as:

www.fancyclothing.com.au/mens/mensshirts/red-shirt

www.fancyclothing.com.au/mens/businessshirts/red-shirt

www.fancyclothing.com.au/mens/onsale/red-shirt

The Same Text on Multiple Pages

You may want to ensure that whatever page your visitors enter your website from; they can always find out about the core product/services your business offers, or the key reasons why you’re the best at what you do. Even though the pages contain different URL’s this can still cause problems. For example, if you’re trying to rank for the term ‘business consulting’ but you have the same text describing business consulting on 10 pages, which page is Google supposed to display in their results?

www, no www, https / http

It’s not entirely necessary to enter the exact URL of a website for it to be displayed. For example the Contactpoint website can be accessed by typing different combinations such as:

https://www.contactpoint.com.au

http://www.contactpoint.com.au

www.contactpoint.com.au

contactpoint.com.au

You will notice that whichever URL is used, it will always direct to https://www.contactpoint.com.au. This has been implemented as our preferred URL, and it is easy for Google to identify.
We find that some websites do not direct to a preferred URL, simply retaining the URL which was entered. Website visitors won’t notice a difference, however Google sees this as four duplicate websites instead of one unique website.

When performing an SEO review, we search for any possible duplicate content issues which may be harming your search engine ranks, and implement solutions which improve the ranks without harming your visitor’s ability to navigate the website with ease.

By now you can probably gather that search engine ranks are influenced by a vast number of factors. By helping clients to overcome these factors and implement strategies to reach their target market, we create what is in many cases a business’ number one marketing channel. Contact us now for an obligation-free discussion about how we can assist your website to rank higher in Google searches.

As the creator of a broadly used email and SMS marketing solution (eNudge) for the Australia marketplace, I thought that over the years I would see a general improvement in the way email marketing campaigns were constructed and delivered. I’m sad to say that on the whole, nothing much has changed. eNudge provides a myriad tools to help you segment, target, automate, measure and analyse, but it’s in the execution where many people fall down. Business owners and marketers get busy, and then just flick off a quick email to get a spike in sales. They are content with a spike and move on.

However, I know there is a better way … there always has been. Many marketers refer to it as lead nurturing, and email campaigns (including the eNudge Message Series functionality) are an excellent way to nurture your leads. For many years, marketing personnel have been working with a Sales Funnel model in mind – a linear movement of a potential buyer through awareness, interest, desire and finally action (buy). Lead nurturing refers to understanding where your lead is in the sales funnel, and give them the next piece of information that they need to take them to the next step in the journey; the next step closer towards being ready to buy.

I could be placated if I saw email marketing being used more for lead nurturing … more value and information being supplied, in a logical flow, engaging with potential buyers and taking them down a path to understanding and trusting you. However, thoughts even on lead nurturing have moved on …

The changing landscape of information availability via the internet including the impact of social media, and more recent research into buyer behaviour, suggests throwing out the sales funnel model and replacing it with what is being called by McKinsey as the “Consumer Decision Journey“. McKinsey research revealed that far from systematically narrowing their choices, today consumers take a much more iterative and less reductive journey of four stages: 1/ consider, 2/ evaluate, 3/ buy, and 4/ enjoy, advocate, bond. During stage 2 (evaluate) where the Sales Funnel approach says the the options get narrowed down, this in reality is where the brands most active online often replace the brands that were in the original consideration list (perhaps added to the list because of traditional advertising). The consumer’s options actually expand during this phase and the originals often get thrown out where there isn’t enough information online or customer reviews to support them.

Even more critical in what is being seen now in consumer behaviour, McKinsey discovered that during the 4th stage (enjoy-advocate-bond) more than 60% of consumers conduct online research about the products after purchase – a touch point entirely missing from the sales funnel approach. It is during this after purchase where your customer will advocate for your product or service by word of mouth, and produce online content to help future consumers in the consider and evaluate phases.

Other recent research by the Harvard Business Review team has shown that achieving the “full” sale to a B2B client is best achieved by providing the opportunity for that client to purchase small prototypes or incremental products along the buying journey i.e. as part of the evaluate stage. For more about this read: “To Increase Sales, Get Customers to Commit a Little at a Time“.

It was no small task, but the Harvard Business Review article describes an example implementation of changing the view of marketing to that of the ‘Consumer Decision Journey’ lead to a new TV becoming the top seller on Amazon.com and the company’s best performer in retail stores, far exceeding the marketers’ expectations.

To ensure that your product or service is not thrown out by prospects during the Evaluate phase of the consumer journey, and to help new customers to Enjoy, Advocate and Bond:

Make sure your product or service is present online, not only in your own website, but also in comparison sites and marketplaces (for B2C) and online communities (for B2B)

Foster online reviews of your products and services via social media and 3rd party websites

Provide rich and easily accessible information online for people who have already purchased your product or service to help them get the most out of it

Introduce new ways to inspire existing customers to refer their friends and colleagues to you – think DropBox who give away additional storage space for referring business

Your email marketing activities should assist you with with each of the above. Email campaigns should be created specifically for new customers and should point to additional online resources, and specifically ask for reviews or feedback. Email campaigns to your wider database should reference case studies and additional information available to help prospects in the evaluate phase.

If you need help with:

creating incremental or prototype products to sell to your clients as they evaluate,

In order to obtain an accurate gauge between desktop and mobile search results, we needed to select a website without a mobile-friendly website version or responsive design.

More Than Paws is an e-commerce website specialising in clothing, accessories and costumers mainly for our canine friends, as well as other household pets. The More Than Paws team have been thinking about adopting a responsive website since there was first talk of the mobile-friendly algorithm update.

In order to review the impact of the change, we selected 4 search terms that the More Than Paws website had been ranking well on in the months leading up to the Google algorithm change. The following search engine ranks are for Australian only results in Google, for both mobile and desktop devices – we performed these searches manually, without being signed into any Google Account in order to get the most accurate results.

Dog Bandanas
Desktop: #5
Mobile: #5

Dog Clothes
Desktop: #12
Mobile: #12

Dog Costumes
Desktop: #6
Mobile: #8

Dog Hoodies
Desktop: #3
Mobile: #5

The above results show a small impact on our client website’s Google ranks, with the search terms: ‘Dog Costumes’ and ‘Dog Hoodies’ both showing a 2 position rank deficit compared to the desktop.

We also reviewed the number of impressions for the More Than Paws website via desktop compared to mobile devices, pre and post the algorithm change.

Impressions from March 25 to April 21 (mobile-friendly algorithm introduction)

From the 23rd of March up until the advent of the mobile-friendly algoithm, the More Than Paws website received 5,752 impressions via desktop and 3,530 via a mobile device, which equates to a 47.87% difference.

Impressions from April 21 to June 22.

Since the introduction of the update, up until the 22nd June, the More Than Paws website received 20,488 impressions via desktop and 11,931 via a mobile device, which equates to a 52.79% difference, or reduction of 4.92% of impressions between mobile and desktop devices.

It should be noted that most of the websites ranking well for similar search terms do not yet have mobile friendly / responsive websites. We expect that the difference pre and post the algorithm change would be more significant where well ranking competitors have mobile responsive websites. We also expect to see the difference between the ranks to become more significant over time, as Google adjusts the algorithm to achieve its aims in this area.

After passing the billboard on the Westgate freeway several times, I just had to know what the advertising was all about. I mean … a Google search box containing the search phrase “reach mobile Melbournians” had to be somehow relevant to the endeavours of Contact Point!

So I grabbed my mobile phone (hubby was driving so that presented no problem) and typed in the search term “reach mobile melbournians” only to find a collection of random unrelated search results for page after page. Very frustrating! I am fairly of-fey with searching, having been involved in search engine optimisation since it began, so I continued on regardless to find what the billboard was all about. I refined my search to ‘reach mobile Melbournians billboard’ and was fortunate enough to get to the right place. The answer? A big new digital billboard coming into Melbourne City. So the ‘mobile’ in those search terms referred to people on their feet (rather than on a mobile device), and the Melbournians was actually people visiting the heart of the city of Melbourne.

Actually, to be completely honest, this was the second I had searched for this search term – the first time, after passing the sign at a pretty good speed, I searched for ‘reach mobile Melburnians’ because I thought that was how it was spelled.

Today I was glad to have my curiosity satisfied, however it struck me that the effort I was prepared to put in so that I could find the answer to the burning question raised by the billboard surely wouldn’t be the norm, and therefore the cost of that billboard wasn’t capitalised on with a complementary search engine marketing campaign.

If Contact Point had been engaged to assist the promoter we would have recommended the following:

Write an article or two like this, explaining the meaning of the billboard advertising, and publishing the blog a day before or on the day that the billboard ad appeared.

Ensure that the blog was well optimised for the search engines.

Include a custom, short URL in the billboard to help the curious find it.

Use social media simultaneously on the launch day or just before, to talk about the billboard, pointing to the explanatory webpage, and using useful hash tags to help searchers find it (eg multiple spellings of words if necessary)

Once the billboard was actually out in the public, take a video of it and post that on the company YouTube account, including appropriate hash tags and including a URL that points back to the landing page on the website.

There’s more you could do if you have budget, but all of the above could be done for very little cost and effort, making it much easier for me to solve my burning question. That’s my two cents worth!